October 2014

EGL

April 25, 2013

If there's one thing that folks in the
IBM i community love, it's a name change, right?

Well, here's one that we never thought
we'd see - one that puts us back to where we were a few years ago. Nope, IBM i
is not changing its name to iSeries or AS/400 (but that would have been a good
April Fool's joke a few weeks ago, wouldn't it? Wish we had thought of that.)

We're sure you have all followed
carefully the progression of packages and names for the Eclipse-based
development toolset from WDSC (WebSphere Development Studio Client) to RDi
(Rational Developer for i) and then to RDP, or RD Power as some prefer
(Rational Developer for Power Systems).

We're kidding of course. From the number
of questions we get personally and see on forums, Internet lists, LinkedIn
groups, etc., the litany of names has been a big source of confusion for many.

Guess what--we're going back to RDi
again. Rational Developer for i. They've added "RPG and COBOL Tools"
to the end of it, but still, it would seem that V9.0 (for those who have lost
count, the current version is V8.5.1) will be called Rational Developer for i -
or, we presume, RDi for short, as before.

We haven't seen any information yet on
pricing, but we're hopeful that there won't be a significant increase beyond
perhaps the (sadly) all-too-predictable 15% that seems inevitable with
each turn of the crank.

As far as enhancements to function for
IBM i RPG and COBOL developers, we haven't seen a lot. It appears that IBM Data
Studio is now packaged with the new version vs being a free download that you
could install yourself at 8.5.1.

Also listed are "Significant
improvements to Remote Systems Explorer qualities of service." This sounds
like lawyer-speak for bug fixes. We hope we're wrong but don't hold your
breath. Then again, bug fixes would also be welcome.

There are two new packages, in addition to
the basic RDi package:

1) Rational Developer for i RPG and COBOL
+ Modernization Tools, Java Edition - this would appear to replace the Rational
Developer for Power Systems Software Power Tools for i.

2) RPG and COBOL + Modernization Tools,
EGL Edition - this would appear to replace the oddly named RDi SOA toolset,
which never changed to RDP when all the similar products did, for some reason.

From what we understand, if you have
Rational Developer for Power Systems (what we've referred to as RDP) and have
an active SW maintenance agreement, you will be entitled to a no charge license
to the V9.0 RDi package. Someone reported on the WDSC-L list on Midrange.com
that it will require a new Activation Kit to be used to install it, however.

Likewise, if you have a license to the
RDP Power Tools, you're entitled to V9.0 RDi+ Modernization Tools, Java Edition, and if you have a license to RDi
SOA, you're entitled to V9.0 RDi+
Modernization Tools, EGL Edition - both assuming active SW maintenance, of
course.

So is all this good news, bad news or no
news?

Until pricing is clear and, of course, we
see how well the actual V9.0 code performs, it's hard to say. The new packages
do seem to more accurately reflect what people really need. AIX/Linux
developers have their own product and IBM i folks have RDi - as we did before.
If you want/need more significant Java and/or EGL support, there are additional
features for that.

Anything that simplifies the ordering
process is a step in the right direction of course. But will the Rational reps
stop trying to write up orders for RAD when IBM i shops call to get
"Rational" to develop their RPG code? We can but hope!

December 20, 2011

We've had some exciting feedback so far on our latest EXTRA article about using the new XMLSERVICE open-source toolset to turn "ordinary" RPG programs into Web services to easily make your RPG repertoire of business logic more widely available.

We heard from one reader who saw potential in using XMLSERVICE in his company's application. He sent the idea up the chain to one of the internal technical consultants in his company who was apparently sufficiently impressed to send it up to a director, who in turn sent it on to a leading technical architect with a recommendation to pursue a proof of concept (PoC) project. The PoC project will, fortunately, include the person who originally suggested the idea! See what reading our articles can do for your career visibility!

A more general lesson may be derived from this--if you learn about some new technology or technique that sounds like it could be of use in your company's application suite, take a shot at sending it up the management chain. Even if the tool or technique in question proves not to be the best solution, the fact that you took the initiative to identify the potential and to suggest its use can have a very positive impact on your visibility. Indeed it can have a significant impact on the visibility of the IBM i in the organization. All too often when discussing "threatened" systems we find that management rarely knows what the system is capable of and that is part of the reason for the threat.

Another person--a fellow author in the IBM i community, Dan Darnell--emailed us to say he has implemented the XMLSERVICE toolset for calling Web services from EGL. He plans to publish an article about his results shortly. The interesting impact this has for some of his clients is that many of them may be able to use the new free community edition of EGL in combination with XMLSERVICE to implement their applications without the need to purchase the rather pricey RBD tool. (We apologize about that to our friends at Rational!)

We also installed XMLSERVICE recently at a client who is now actively involved in a PoC project of its own to see if it solves a need the client has had for a while to use RPG programs as Web services.

If you have taken a look at using XMLSERVICE, or for that matter any of the other techniques or technologies we've written about recently, let us know. We would love to share your experiences with others.

June 23, 2010

EGL--IBM's recent announcement that EGL would be going open source has raised quite a bit of interest in the IBM i community. You can find all the details of the announcement at the EGL Cafe. It is a move we are pleased to see because one of our concerns with the product (apart from the "RPG replacement" philosophy that was part of Rational's sales pitch for a while) was that IBM would be unable to sustain the level of effort needed to maintain such a complex product in a rapidly evolving Web world. Having seen what happened to poor old orphaned VARPG and a few other products we were concerned that EGL could go the same way. It will take a while to see if it does indeed "take" in the open source world, but if it does then at least that concern is addressed.

But that wasn't the thing that got the i community excited. Rather it was the possibility that an Open Source EGL opened the door for the development of an RPG generator that got folks bouncing up and down. IBM had chosen to support only the generation of Java and COBOL for sever-side operations and never gave the slightest impression that the company would ever seriously consider RPG generation. Of course when a generator is involved, it really shouldn't matter what language is generated as you (hopefully) never have to look at the code. The primary value of an RPG generator would be a stronger feeling that the tool was aimed at the IBM i community.

Jon's hoping to explore EGL's Community Edition before too long, but so far is having problems getting it to run on his Mac. IBM seems to have neglected OS X in their testing, an omission that hopefully the open-source community will redress. Watch this space ...

RPG Open Access (ROA)--We were expecting to have heard a couple more ISV announcements by now, but if there have been any we've missed them. However both looksoftware and Profound Logic are pressing ahead and the excitement remains high everywhere they demonstrate the capabilities of their ROA-enabled products. We have plans to produce a couple of demonstration ROA handlers in the next month or so--hopefully when a few more people do so we'll start to see some open-source projects and maybe a few more product announcements. It would be nice if there were a few more available to show folks by the time we get to the RPG & DB2 Summit in Minneapolis later this year.

PHP--In case you have missed it, the new Zend Server is now _the_ PHP server for the IBM i. This is a major departure from the old Zend Core and shows significant performance boosts over its predecessor. When you first load the product it runs for the first 30 days as the full Zend Server, degrading gracefully to the Community Edition level after the trial period. While you are in the trial period you should try very hard not to fall in love with the Code Tracing and Event Monitoring facilities. Whatever you do, don't look at them! One look and you'll be captive, seduced by their ability to look deep into the root causes of your problems--and then where will you be? Forced to seek budget approval so that you can continue to use them after the trial period that's where. So whatever you do don't look at these sexy tools.

Frankly, even without all of the new bells and whistles and performance boost we'd have been happy with Zend Server if for no other reason than it does away with the second Apache instance. Zend Server uses a fast-CGI Apache plug-in (written by IBM) to interface directly between a regular Apache instance and the Zend Server code running in PASE. No more messing with two Apache instances - hoorrrrayyyyyyy!

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